"Dudley! It is cruel of you to speak like this!" she cried with a sudden outburst of emotion, for she now saw quite plainly that the power she once exerted over him had disappeared. Chisholm had been sadly disillusioned. During the past few weeks the bitter truth had gradually been forced upon him. Instead of remaining a real, dignified, high-minded woman of unblemished integrity, Claudia Nevill had grown callous and artificial, and in other ways hostile to true womanhood. But Dudley had always admired her, and once she had been his ideal. He had admired her simplicity of heart. Unquestionably that is a great charm in a woman, though not a charm so illuminating as integrity, because it consists more in the ignorance of evil, and, consequently, of temptation, than in the possession of principle strong enough to withstand both. In the days before her marriage her simplicity of heart was the child of that unruffled serenity of soul which suspects no mischief to be lurking beneath the fair surface of things--which trusts, confides and is happy in this confidence, because it has never been deceived, and because it has never learned that most fatal of all arts, the mystery of deceiving others. But all was now changed. She was no longer the Claudia of old. She had degenerated into a smart, brilliant woman, full of arts and subterfuges, with no thoughts beyond her engagements, her toilettes, and her vainglorious triumphs. "I have only spoken what I feel, Claudia!" exclaimed the man still standing before her. "I have no power to compel you to heed my warning." "Oh, do let us drop the subject, my dear Dudley!" she cried impatiently. "This lecture of yours upon my duty towards society may surely be continued on another occasion. Let us go along to the Duchess's. As I've already said, the House has entirely spoilt you." "I don't wish to continue the discussion. Indeed, I've said all that I intend saying. My only regret is that you are heedless of my words-- that you are blind to the truth, and have closed your ears to all this gossip." "Let them gossip. What does it matter to me? Now to you, of course, it matters considerably. You can't afford to imperil your official position by allowing all this chatter to go on. I quite understand that." "And yet you come here to-night and ask me to take you to the Duchess's?" he said. "For the last time, Dudley," she answered, looking up at him with that sweet, sympathetic look of old. "This is the last of our engagements, and it is an odd fancy of mine that you should take me to the ball--for the last time." "Yes," he repeated hoarsely, in a deep voice full of meaning; "for the last time, Claudia." "You speak as though you were doomed to some awful fate," she remarked, looking up at him with a puzzled expression on her face. Little did the giddy woman think that her words, like the sword of the angel at the entrance to Paradise, were double-edged.